MSNBC Cancels the Phil Donahue Talk Show

By BILL CARTER

Published: February 26, 2003

MSNBC canceled Phil Donahue's nightly show yesterday, putting an end to its high-profile effort to challenge CNN and the Fox News Channel in the area of prime-time politically oriented talk.

The move had been expected for many months, as Mr. Donahue never generated the kind of ratings surge that MSNBC had expected. MSNBC plans to extend its program ''Countdown: Iraq'' with Lester Holt, now on at 7 p.m., to two hours to fill the time slot temporarily.

MSNBC has already hired Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota, to be host of a prime-time talk show, and is in discussions with Sam Donaldson, the longtime ABC News correspondent, to anchor a nightly prime-time newscast. No starting date for either of those programs has been announced, and the channel has said that it will wait to see what news takes place related to a possible war in Iraq before it makes permanent changes to its prime-time schedule.

Mr. Donahue declined to comment yesterday, but he was expected to release a statement today.

Mr. Donahue was brought to MSNBC with much fanfare last July, after being off television since the end of his syndicated talk show in 1996. But ratings for the show disappointed the channel from the start.

In the 8 p.m. slot, Mr. Donahue's show averaged 439,000 viewers over the past month, far short of his competitors, Connie Chung on CNN, who had 970,000 viewers, and Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, who dominated the hour with 2.7 million viewers.

Mr. Donahue's show had been growing slightly over the past few months, and he was actually attracting more viewers than any other show on MSNBC, even the channel's signature prime-time program ''Hardball With Chris Matthews.'' Mr. Matthews's show has averaged 413,000 viewers over the last month.

The difference, an NBC News executive explained, was that Mr. Donahue's show was extremely expensive to produce, because it involved a studio audience. The network was also disappointed that he was not more competitive with Ms. Chung.